New Years Baseball Eve

[DOUGHBOYS]

My second grade teacher wrote on my report card, "Danny suffers from baseballitis."
It was a good diagnosis.
She did not enjoy how I would sneak a transistor radio into her room to catch part of a ball game.
Nor have a notebook full of the current home run leaders in baseball, instead of the date that Columbus discovered America.
But, she did like that I was so much further ahead of the other kids in that I could figure batting average and E.R.A., later, I would discover this to be called 'mathematics'.

"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."
That quote is from Rogers Hornsby.
I wasn't as bad as the picture painted in his quote, but it was close.
Living in California as a kid, I could always find a pick-up game of baseball or at least hit rocks with a pick handle.
Still, there was something large missing.
No Major League Baseball.
Nothing to follow in the paper.
Football was not yet a big deal in the 60's.
Besides, I was a stats guy.
Yards passing or rushing compared miserably to home runs, batting average, and E.R.A.
I wasn't the only one who thought this way about football.
The first Super Bowl was played in the L.A. Coliseum.
A Stadium that holds 94,000 people. Less than 62,000 fans attended.
Can you imagine the Super Bowl being played before 2/3 of a crowd today?

Most baseball seasons start around April 1 and end around September 30.
Six months.
Then a week of the World Series.
Then nothing.
Nothing.
The days would drag by until December.
Then, there was Christmas to look forward to.
My presents were books about baseball or a bat. Once, my Mom thought to buy some baseball cards during the Summer and give them to me for Christmas.
It was 1962. I still remember the wood grain bordering those cards.
Beautiful.

A week later was New Years Day.
I didn't care about the parades. I didn't care about the Bowl games.
But I celebrated the New Year as much as everybody else.
Although others were celebrating the New Year out of tradition and coming of a hopeful New Year, my reasons for celebrating were different.
New Years Day was the halfway mark of the dreadful off season being over.
WOO HOO!
THAT was cause for celebration.
So, as all you folks celebrate the New Year tonight.
Remember to, that we are on the downside slope of seeing another season.
Enjoy!

[TOXIC ASSETS]

A non-conformist you were then....and now.
Like me.

Happy New Year.

Baseball is on the way soon.

[Pine Tar]

Wow, that sounds so much like my childhood. I too grew up in the 50's and 60's and baseball was everything from the time I was 7 years old, despite the fact that no one else in the family had any interest in baseball. I remember listening to games on the transistor radio and I still remember my dad walking by when I was listening to a game, instead of mowing the lawn, and saying "foolishness". I made up a baseball game with three dice when I was 8 and would divide up my baseball cards by team, set lineups, play games and keep stats, including calculating batting average and ERA. That may well have been the reason that I always did very well in math when I was in high school.

Thanks for the post, I love those memories.

Ken Martinson